Wednesday, December 14, 2005

You're Welcome ElBaradei, Don't Mention It

Well I'm miffed. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, did not use my way good suggestion that when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, he pay special thanks to George Bush and his naïve Neocon foreign policy wonks for making it all possible. I got nada, nothing, zilch.

Believe me, I've looked. I looked at the
BBC, New York Times, USAToday, Washington Post, and CBS News and found nothing. Nothing in his speech paid homage to the man who put him at the podium in Oslo. He did say, "…history has taught us that war rarely resolves our differences. Force does not heal old wounds; it opens new ones." As real world as that may sound, it seems more of a dissing of Bush and his Neocon inspired invasion than thanking those bumbling foreign policy strategists for providing undeniable proof of what had been a success for the U.N.'s diplomatic efforts. What a bunch of ingrates.

We gave proof that the U.N., and the IAEA in particular, is working. The sanctions against Saddam's Iraq worked – in spite of the corruption of the Food-for-Oil Program. There were no WMD's. We thought they were there. The IAEA did not believe they were there, or at least, not enough to pose a threat (you know, like parts were buried in somebody's backyard), but no one had any actual proof. Now we do, and what thanks do we get?

From what was put out in the MSM stories sited above, The Nobel Peace Prize Committee and its chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjos, had no doubt what Bush and team had done. Although like ElBaradei's statement above, they criticized Bush for the stratagem he chose rather than the one they would have preferred and gave no mention to our actions in providing proof of the effectiveness of the U.N.'s sanctions or the IAEA's process of investigations and monitoring.

You know, you don't get that kind of proof very often. That kind of proof is oh so very rare and very difficult to provide, too. Don't expect that kind of proof while dealing with Iran and certainly not North Korea – that is unless the Neocons get to exercise the rest of their agenda. In which case, more proofs of some sort will be forthcoming.

Gee, go out, implement a rather shallow and simplistic concept, spin your own self, invade and take over a country preemptively, provide proofs the opposite of which you were looking for, and what kind of thanks do you get? This is truly an ungrateful world.